I don't know why but reading Visceral's thread on dreams made me think of seeing ppl on Tv being hypnotized. I really don't buy the whole thing, and wonder if I could actually go under. It looks so fake to me that ppl sit in a chair and start counting backwards and the next thing you know it's like you are under a spell. Is it one of those things that you really have to believe in it for it to work? Is it harder to be hypnotized if you have a strong feeling it's all bullshit? Has anyone here ever been hypnotized?
Possibly you could do it when someone was in that state where they're waking up from REM, but not quite fully lucid, before their logical mind kicked in...but then they're still going to wake up.
It's basically just getting you in to a willing state of mind. Once that is don you can influence peoples thoughts. It was my aunt who did it, she does all sorts of things like that.
My psychology teacher at school says you can be hypnotized if you believe it is possible, and if you don't believe in hypnotism, you can't be hypnotized. Thats all I knowabout it...
I've never been hypnotized, but I know this type of stuff exist. There was this news on TV in Indo about somebody getting robbed in bank because they were hypnotized. I don't know how exactly does this thing work, but the expert on the news told us not to look into the eyes in case some stranger claps our shoulder or trying to talk to us. Some links about bank robbery using hypnotic: http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=50695 This one is more recent: http://services.inquirer.net/print/print.php?article_id=20081006-164928